Google Metaweb Deal Points to Possible Engineering Issue
July 19, 2010
Years ago, I wrote a BearStearns’ white paper “Google’s Semantic Web: the Radical Change Coming to Search and the Profound Implications to Yahoo & Microsoft,” May 16, 2007, about the work of Epinions’ founder, Dr. Ramanathan Guha. Dr. Guha bounced from big outfit to big outfit, landing at Google after a stint at IBM Almaden. My BearStearns’ report focused on an interesting series of patent applications filed in February 2007. The five patent applications were published on the same day. These are now popping out of the ever efficient USPTO as granted patents.
A close reading of the Guha February 2007 patent applications and other Google technical papers make clear that Google had a keen interest in semantic methods. The company’s acquisition of Transformics at about the same time as Dr. Guha’s jump to the Google was another out-of-spectrum signal for most Google watchers.
With Dr. Guha’s Programmable Search Engine inventions and Dr. Alon Halevy’s dataspace methods, Google seemed poised to take over the floundering semantic Web movement. I recall seeing Google classification methods applied in a recipe demo, a headache demo, and a real estate demo. Some of these demos made use of entities; for example, “skin cancer” and “chicken soup”.
Has Google become a one trick pony? The buy-technology trick? Can the Google pony learn the diversify and grow new revenue tricks before it’s time for the glue factory?
In 2006, signals I saw flashed green, and it sure looked as if Google could speed down the Information Highway 101 in its semantic supercar.
Is Metaweb a Turning Point for Google Technology?
What happened?
We know from the cartwheels Web wizards are turning, Google purchased computer Zen master Danny Hillis’ Metaweb business. Metaweb, known mostly to the information retrieval and semantic Web crowd, produced a giant controlled term list of people, places, and things. The Freebase knowledgebase is a next generation open source term list. You can get some useful technical details from the 2007 “On Danny Hillis, eLearning, Freebase, Metaweb, Semantic Web and Web 3.0” and from the Wikipedia Metaweb entry here.
What has been missing in the extensive commentary available to me in my Overflight service is some thinking about what went right or wrong with Google’s investments and research in closely adjacent technologies. Please, keep in mind that the addled goose is offering his observations based on his research for this three Google monographs, The Google Legacy, Google Version 2.0, and Google: the Digital Gutenberg. If you want to honk back, use the comments section of this Web log.
First, Google should be in a position to tap its existing metadata and classification systems such as the Guha context server and the Halevy dataspace method for entities. Failing these methods, Google has its user input methods like Knol and its hugely informative search query usage logs to generate a list of entities. Heck, there is even the disambiguation system to make sense of misspellings of people like Britney Spears. I heard a Googler give a talk in which the factoid about hundreds of variants of Ms. Spears’s name were “known” to the Google system and properly substituted automagically when the user goofed. The fact that Google bought Metaweb makes clear that something is still missing.
Barcode Scan Coming to iPhone
July 18, 2010
From the search without search department:
Things keep moving forward where technology is concerned and that’s most apparent when it comes to everyone clamoring over themselves and each other to be the ones to come out with something new in that technology.
So Apple needs to stay on top and that’s why they are looking at NFC-enhanced apps that will let users, among other things, scan a barcode on an item to get the product reviews or check nutritional information on a menu before you order from a restaurant.
Here’s a new approach to findability that plays right into the health consciousness and new consumer awareness.
With this new kind of barcode scanning coming to iPhone, we’ll all be able to make the best choices and keep bad firms and industries on their toes. One of the goslings recalls reading that this idea has surfaced elsewhere. The legal eagles will sleuth out this potential intellectual overlap.
Rob Starr, July 18, 2010
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Google Android, Froyo and Security
July 16, 2010
There have been reports that as many as 40,000 impatient hackers have gotten their Android updates a little early by going the hacker route. Presently, the only phone to get the proper update was the Nexus one. Google designed this one and take what you will from this bit of information, but it’s one of the worst selling phones.
So hackers with other versions decided to get theirs, according to a published report in tgdaily.com. Although the download site is no longer valid, it appears that up to 37,000 people clicked through the package.
If all this is true, these impatient android hackers getting Froyo brings up some interesting issues for Google. Privacy and security are important and Google needs to maintain their forward momentum here.
Rob Starr, July 16, 2010
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Quote to Note: Google, Android, iPhone, and Time
July 16, 2010
Quote to note: Today’s quote to note appeared in “Google: ‘We Did Not Follow Apple into Phone Market.’” The addled goose has no position on this issue. The reason has to do with the meaning of “market”. Google’s patent applications prior to 2008 include what the Colbert Report might call “phone-iness.” However, “market” can mean available to anyone able to reach the counter in an ATT or Apple store and push a pile of money toward the ever efficient clerks. Anyway here’s the quote to note:
“We had been working on Android a very long time, with the notion of producing phones that are Internet enabled and have good browsers and all that because that did not exist in the marketplace. I think that [Steve Jobs’] characterization of us entering after is not really reasonable.”
Now what’s reasonable mean? Telling a country what to do? Rewriting history the way a certain famous Georgian did? Interpreting research as being in a market? See why the goose was such a lousy student. Maybe Apple’s Board of Directors learned about phones from a certain Board member? I just thought it was a “me too” play.
Stephen E Arnold, July 16, 2010
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Exalead and Mobile Search
July 5, 2010
Podcast Interview with Paul Doscher, Part 4
Exalead’s Paul Doscher talks about Exalead and mobile search on the July 5, 2010 ArnoldIT Beyond Search podcast. Exalead, now part of the large French software and services company Dassault, continues to ramp up its search, content processing, and search enabled applications. (Now part of Dassault, one of the world’s leading software and services engineering firms acquired Exalead earlier this year. You can read about the acquisition in “Exalead Acquired by Dassault” and “Exalead and Dassault Tie Up, Users Benefit.”
In the July 2010 podcast, Mr. Doscher talks about Exalead and mobile search, one of the hottest sectors in information retrieval. Exalead has assisted one of its clients (Urbanizer.com) has developed an innovative method of locating information.
The Exalead user experience approach makes it possible to deliver access via a range of mobile devices for consumer and special purpose access.
You can listen to the podcast on the ArnoldIT.com Web site. More information about Exalead is available from www.exalead.com.
The ArnoldIT podcast series extends the Search Wizards Speak series of interview beyond text into rich media. Watch this blog for announcements about other rich media programs from the professionals who move information retrieval beyond search.
Stephen E Arnold, July 5, 2010
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Mobile Factoid: Bad News for the Moderate
July 4, 2010
Point your browserooni at “50% of All Mobile Data Is Consumed by 6% of Users.” Some interesting factoids reside within the write up. Too bad there is an annoying and fatuous “all” because the data are decidedly narrow. Here’s the passage I noted:
Even for those who have a plan, the majority are paying for a service that they’re not even really using. “About 20 million current smartphone users are hardly using data,” said Nielsen SVP Roger Entner in an Information Week story. Entner [azure chip expert] said that the 6% of smartphone owners who use the most mobile data are using 50% of all mobile data.
The azure chip crowd loves these type of data, however. My view is that telcos will fiddle the numbers and possibly move along this dotted line:
- Heavy data users will pay lots for their habit
- The tiering can extract more money from the mid tier users
- The base rate can go up justified by the heavy data users of the addicts.
In short, save your pennies.
Stephen E Arnold, July 4, 2010
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Quote to Note: The Price of Success Is Death
July 3, 2010
Quote to note: A classic popped out of “Google chief: Nexus One Was ‘So Successful, We Killed It’. What a Load of Schmidt.” No, that is not the quote. The “load of Schmidt” is part of the source’s headline.
Here’s the quote:
It [the Google Nexus One phone] was so successful, we didn’t have to do a second one. We would view that as positive but people criticized us heavily for that. I called up the board and said: ‘Ok, it worked. Congratulations – we’re stopping’. We like that flexibility, we think that flexibility is characteristic of nimbleness at our scale.” His words are even further removed than an earlier explanation from Android project lead Andy Rubin, who said the company killed its Googlephone webstore because running the thing was just too complicated.
A keeper.
Stephen E Arnold, July 3, 2010
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Apple vs Google: Is It Darth Vader vs the Math Club
June 29, 2010
Apple operates with a controlling idea: make lots of money and control as much as possible. If I remember the Star Wars film series, Darth Vader operated in a similar way. I recall one scene in which he choked some hapless underling for not doing what Mr. Vader wanted. Google, on the other, hand operates in an iterative fashion. The company’s approach relies on pushing out products, services, and technologies and then adapting. The two methods are fascinating to watch, and I am not sure which is more effective. When it comes to control, Apple has the upper hand. When it comes to doing lots of things and making changes in near real time, Google is the clear winner.
When I read “Google’s Mismanagement of the Android Market,” I thought of the differences in management methods at these two companies. Whatever Google learned when it was pals with Apple did not spill over into marketing in my opinion. The write up in Nanocr.eu said:
Earlier this week, CNET ran an article critical of the permission model of the Android Market. Google’s response to the criticism was that “each Android app must get users’ permission to access sensitive information”. While this is technically true, one should not need a PhD in Computer Science to use a smartphone. How is a consumer supposed to know exactly what the permission “act as an account authenticator” means? The CNET opinion piece “Is Google far too much in love with engineering?” is quite relevant here.
Yes but isn’t Apple in love with engineering as well. The description of how the iPhone was designed and built is a case study in engineering. If you have not read about the Apple design-build method, navigate to “Core77 Speaks with Jonathan Ive on the Design of the IPhone 4: Material Matters.”
For me, the killer comment in the write up was:
Developers and users are getting fed up and it’s time for Google to clean up the house.
No one is more surprised than I at the strong uptake for the iPad and now the iPhone 4. The message is that consumers are looking for products that are easy to use and pretty much do a few things well. Darth Vader may not have been the homecoming king, but he sure seems to know how to move product in a way that is understandable to consumers. The Math Club may have to rethink its iterative approach to products and services if the Darth Vader approach continues to work despite its flaws.
Apple’s search is now Bing. The Darth Vader approach may be good enough for Apple and a real boost for Microsoft.
Stephen E Arnold, June 29, 2010
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EMC Beefs Up Its Content Processing
June 27, 2010
Data collection agency EMC, http://www.emc.com, has moved to build a platform for expanding business in the future, thanks to a recent partnership inked with low-profile legal discovery company Applied Discovery. Rumor has it that EMC learned about search via a marriage and divorce with the Fast Search & Transfer technology. The most recent move is to create a comprehensive service by blending SourceOne eDiscovery-Kazeon with the case discovery review power of Applied Discovery’s process and review engine. EMC started out as large storage vendor, and they bought Kazeon.Will the result be a complete solution for indexing and searching large data stores? EMC hopes this is the findability fix.
Patrick Roland, June 27, 2010
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Google and Its Pals: Similar to the Handling of Countries?
June 24, 2010
Developers are not countries. No armies, police, or bureaucracy. I read “Google Risks OEM Wrath for Unified Android UI Plan” and locked on the word “risk”. There is little short term risk in changing rules on the fly that leave developers with rising blood pressure. Open source can “fork”; that is, shatter into many little pieces. The notion of “unified” is what one allegedly gets when buying a commercial software system. The idea is that there is “one throat to choke.” According to the write up,
the top priority for the next Android update, codenamed Gingerbread, is to homogenize the user experience and address criticisms of fragmentation. This could severely curtail the freedom of licensees to create their own user interface overlays – most famously, Motorola’s Motoblur and HTC’s Sense.
What happens if Google forces developers to row the canoe in a cadence called by Google? What happens if a rower wants to set his or her own pace? Apple has never been shy about making it clear that there is one way to play the Apple game. Google seems to be discovering the wisdom of Jobs on the fly.
Some countries find Google’s facile behavior worthy of some attention. Developers can only complain. The question is, “Will the benefits of getting invited to a Google shindig be worth the costs, uncertainty, and figure-it-out-as-we-go approach that emerges from a 10 year old company trying to act like a start up?”
The “rogue coder” Wi Fi cuteness and the Bing-bang-gone splash page are just two examples of controlled chaos being more chaotic and less controlled. Apple and Microsoft may have Google unwittingly helping each company in the mobile space. Just my opinion. I really liked the unilateral image, the slow loading time, and the direct imitation of Bing. The action defines Google 2010, right? Minimal risk with unification, right? Android is open, right? (Lots of “rights”, right?)
Stephen E Arnold, June 24, 2010
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